Chapter Sixteen Dump the Consols
The agrarian tribunal in the Green Room showed no signs of adjourning. Robert was currently threatening to court-martial Tepper for failing to turn page four hundred with sufficient reverence, while Mr Bennet offered slurred, unhelpful commentary on the specific viscosity of Hertfordshire manure.
Charles backed away. He needed air. He needed a sanctuary where people were not waving gold canes. His chest ached from a pressure that came directly from a woman currently haunting his guest wing.
He went down the stairs and then turned right to the music room.
He needed a place to think, a quiet corner where he could lean against a wall and brood.
Brooding seemed the appropriate activity for someone who wore a coat made of carpet and was carrying the weight of the world's most complicated courtship.
He pushed the double doors open.
She was there.
Mary stood in front of the enormous instrument, her hand resting on the polished mahogany lid. She wore a gown of soft, oversized grey wool that swallowed her small frame. Her hair, usually pulled back in a knot tight enough to withstand a gale, fell in a dark, unpinned cascade down her back.
Charles halted, his boots squeaking on the parquet. "I thought you were resting."
Mary started, and turned to face him. She adjusted her spectacles, an impulsive motion she used in most situations that felt out of her control. "The silence upstairs was loud. My mind refused to settle. I fled."
"It is a good instrument." Charles walked into the room. "It arrived more than a month ago. Tepper claims it weighs more than a guilty conscience."
"It is magnificent." Her fingers traced the ivory keys, silent and reverent.
"I heard you." The confession tumbled out, unbidden. He had meant to keep it a secret, a private treasure hoarded in the vault of his memory. "In London, at Darcy House. You were in the music room with Miss Darcy."
Mary stilled. She turned to face him, her eyes wide.
"You were playing." His voice dropped to a hush. He took a step closer, drawn by the gravity of her presence. "But it was not a song. It was a war. It crashed against the walls. It screamed. I had never heard such fury, nor such loneliness. It haunted me."
He paused, studying her face—the pale cheeks, the determined set of her jaw.
"I stood behind the door and listened," he admitted, rubbing the back of his neck. "I simply stood there, listening to you tear the world apart with your hands. I bought this Broadwood because I wanted to give that storm a place to live. I wanted you to have a canvas large enough for the anger."
Mary lowered her gaze to the keys. "I was angry then. I felt invisible. The music was the only way to scream without receiving a lecture on propriety."
"And now?" Charles waited, his pulse beating fast. "Is the storm still there? Do you need to scream?"
She did not answer. She sat on the bench, her simple dress pooling around her on the velvet seat. She adjusted the fabric and poised her hands over the keys.
Charles held his breath. He braced for the thunder. He expected the crashing chords, the dark, brooding sorrow he had witnessed in London. He prepared to weather the gale. He wanted the gale. He wanted to be the man who stood in the storm with her.
Mary pressed down. The keys were heavy, resisting her fingers, demanding strength—a Broadwood was not a toy for a drawing room, but an instrument for a concert hall.
The sound that filled the room was not a storm.
She played a waltz—that dizzying, dangerous German rhythm that had made the Patronesses of Almack's clutch their pearls.
The melody spilled into the air, bright and golden as the afternoon sun.
It swirled. It danced. It possessed a playful, teasing lilt that Charles had never associated with the serious, bookish Mary Bennet.
The notes chased one another up the scale, laughing, tripping over the silence, and filling the cavernous room with pure joy.
Charles gasped. The air left his lungs.
She was not playing to hide. She was not playing to scream. She was playing because the sun was shining, because her father was safe, and because she was alive.
He watched her profile. There was a smile on her lips—not the tight, polite grimace of the drawing room, but a soft, private expression of contentment.
Her shoulders, usually hunched under the weight of expectations, moved freely with the rhythm.
The music spun around them, light as a feather, warm as an embrace.
The ache in his chest vanished. The fear that he was merely a project, a "Man of Depth" to be managed, dissolved into the music. She was not seeking a fellow sufferer. She was seeking a partner for the dance.
She was happy. And he, Charles Bingley, was the man standing in the room while she played the music of her own joy.
The final chord rang out, bright and clear. It hung in the air, shimmering.
Mary dropped her hands to her lap. She turned to him, her cheeks flushed, her eyes bright.
"I find," she whispered, "that I prefer the waltz to dirges these days."
Charles moved around the curve of the Broadwood. He placed a hand on the wood.
"A waltz," he murmured, his fingers tracing the grain. "I expected a storm. I expected thunder."
"The storm has passed." Mary kept her hands still. "Or perhaps I am simply tired of the rain."
Charles stopped beside the bench.
"I have spent months trying to be a man of gravity," he confessed. "I read journals I did not understand. I dug ditches that ruined my boots. I bored your father with lectures on manure. I did it all to prove I was substantial enough to stand next to you."
Mary turned on the bench. Her eyes, stripped of their usual guarded cynicism, searched his face. "You succeeded. You are a man of substance, Charles."
"But I do not want to be a man of substance." He dropped to one knee. He took her hands, holding them in his own warmth. "I am tired of being deep. I am tired of being strategic. I just want to be Charles."
Mary blinked, her breath hitching. "Charles is sufficient. Charles is... adequate."
"Adequate?" He laughed, a breathless, incredulous sound. "Mary, you are the scariest woman I have ever met. You dissect the world with a scalpel. You catalogue human folly in a mental ledger. You frightened me in London. You frighten me now."
He squeezed her fingers.
"But when you play, or when you smile at me across a crowded room... This is the depth. This is the anchor I need. But I do not need only that."
"What else do you need?"
"I need a wife." He leaned forward. He released one of her hands to cup her cheek. His thumb brushed the pale skin beneath her ear, producing goose flesh on her arms.
"I love your mind." He was whispering, his gaze on her lips.
"I love the way you frown when I say a foolish thing.
But I also love this." His hand moved to her hair, his fingers tangling in the dark, loose waves.
"I love the way you look in that serious grey gown.
I love that you are small, and fierce, and that you tended for your father sleepless.
And I want you. In my house. In my life. In my bed."
Mary went still. The Ledger in her mind attempted to process the input.
Variable: Desire.
Status: Overwhelming.
Logic: Failed.
She stared at him. This was not the polite courtship of society. This was not a strategic alliance. This was a man kneeling on a rug, offering her his heart with shaking hands.
"I am plain," she whispered, the old insecurity rising one last time. "I am the drab sister. I am the one who reads sermons."
"You are the sun," Charles corrected, his voice fierce. "And I have been freezing in the dark until you played that waltz."
He did not wait for an answer. He leaned up and kissed her.
It was not a tentative, polite press of lips. It was a collision. It was the breaking of a dam. Charles kissed her with the hunger of a starving man, his mouth warm and demanding. Mary gasped, her hands clutching the rough kersey of his coat, pulling him closer.
The world narrowed to the point of contact.
Mary Bennet, the girl who lived in books, closed her eyes and realised that no novel had ever captured the reality of being wanted. She kissed him back. She poured every ounce of her hidden passion, every suppressed emotion, every secret longing into the embrace.
Charles groaned and deepened the kiss. He pulled himself off the floor and onto the bench, wrapping his arms around her, burying his face in her neck. They were a tangle of wool and kersey, laughing, kissing, oblivious to the world.
"Say yes," he murmured against her skin. "Say you will stay. Say you will play for me and critique my waistcoats and let me love you."
Mary pulled back, breathless, her spectacles askew, her lips swollen. She gazed at him, and she saw her own reflection in a man's eyes not as a shadow, but as the centre of the universe.
"Yes," she nodded vigorously. "Yes. I will stay."
They smiled at each other, two exhausted souls who had finally found their way home.
From the hallway, a low, menacing growl shattered the peace.
It was followed by a shriek that sounded suspiciously like a bird predicting financial ruin.
"Unhand the poultry!" a voice boomed from the corridor. "Tepper! Flank him! He has the bird!"
Charles and Mary froze.
"Was that..." Charles blinked. "Was that a parrot?"
"And a cat," Mary whispered. "And a Viscount."
The double doors did not open so much as explode.
A streak of aggressive orange fur shot across the parquet.
Charles-the-cat entered the music room not as a pet, but as a conqueror returning from the Crusades.
He trotted with his head held high, tail twitching, carrying a prize that squawked, flapped, and shed expensive green feathers with every step.
"Liquidate!" the prize screamed from inside the feline jaws. "Dump the consols!"
Robert Fitzwilliam, a peer of the realm, skidded into the room, his boots losing traction on the polished wood.
He flailed, his arms windmilling, before regaining his balance.
He brandished his cane like a sabre. "Unhand the bird, you ginger demon!
That parrot cost forty guineas to a Duke! It is a depreciating asset!"
Charles-the-cat ignored the shouting giant. He spotted the bench—and the frozen, embraced couple—and decided it offered excellent high ground. He leaped.
Charles-the-human yelped, pulling Mary back as the cat landed between them, the parrot still firmly clamped in his mouth.
"Squawk!" Sir Polonius thrashed, a wing hitting Charles in the nose. "Taxes! Legacy duties!"
"Colonel! Secure the perimeter! Do not let the beast swallow the bird!" Robert roared, charging to the instrument.
Colonel Lindon burst in, breathless and red-faced. "I fought Napoleon," he wheezed, bracing his hands on his knees. "I did not sign up for this."
"Get the bird, man!" the Viscount commanded, circling the bench. "He is trying to digest Sir Polonius!"
Tepper materialised from the hallway. The valet moved with the silent, deadly grace of an assassin. He did not run. He glided. He approached the snarling cat, his face a mask of professional indifference.
Charles-the-cat hissed, tightening his grip. Sir Polonius let out a sound like a tearing sheet.
"My Lord," Tepper stated calmly, reaching into his pocket. "The Dutch beef."
"Bribery?" Robert shouted. "You want to negotiate with thugs?"
"It is the only way." Tepper produced a dark, cured slice of meat from a folded piece of waxed paper. He held it out.
The cat stared at the meat.
"Drop it," the Viscount threatened, raising his cane. "Drop the bird, or I shall turn you into a muff."
Charles-the-cat made a calculation. The bird tasted of dust and feathers. The beef smelled of rich salt and smoke.
He opened his mouth.
Sir Polonius was dropped onto the piano keys with a discordant plink. The cat snatched the meat and vanished under the instrument to consume his ill-gotten gains.
Tepper scooped up the parrot. The bird was ruffled, wet, and missing several tail feathers, looking like a drunkard after a tavern brawl.
"You are safe, Sir Polonius," Tepper murmured, smoothing a wing.
The parrot fixed Tepper with a hate-filled black eye. It shook its head, sending a spray of cat saliva onto the valet's pristine waistcoat.
"Imbecile," Sir Polonius croaked distinctly. "Peasant."
Robert collapsed onto a nearby chair, fanning his face with his hand. "Thank God. Jane would have murdered me. She is fond of the wretched creature. Mostly." He pointed a trembling finger at the cat. "That animal is barred from my estates. He is a Jacobin."
"He is a mouser." Mary wiped a green feather from her sleeve. She adjusted her spectacles, her face flushed, her lips fighting a smile. "He merely mistook Sir Polonius for a very large, very loud mouse."
"He mistook him for luncheon!" Robert retorted. He paused, finally registering the scene. The rumpled rug. The dishevelled couple. The red lips.
His eyes narrowed. A slow, wolfish grin spread across his face.
"Well, well, well," he drawled, tapping his cane on the floor. "I see we interrupted a happy alliance. Or was it a seizure of hearts?"
Charles stood up. He pulled Mary to her feet, wrapping an arm around her waist. He did not stammer. He did not blush. He stood amidst the feathers, the cat, and the pandemonium, and he beamed. "It was a partnership sealed!" he declared. "We shall wed as soon as the banns are read."
"Excellent," Robert slapped his knee. "But not before you pay for the parrot's recuperation. Tepper, take the bird away. Colonel, find us some brandy. We have a wedding to plan, and I intend to be drunk for the duration."
"Squawk!" Sir Polonius agreed as Tepper marched him out. "Dividend! Dividend!"
Mary laughed. The sound rose above the madness, bright and clear. Charles pulled her close, kissing her temple, while the cat chewed loudly on the floor and the Viscount planned the toasts.
The storm had passed.